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Brazil's Doce River still foul eight months after dam collapse

Eight months after a mining dam collapsed in southeastern Brazil, the 1.6 million people living along the Doce River are still struggling not only with health risks, but also with a crisis of public confidence.

"I was making ice cream, and didn't hear the noise," recalls Neuza da Silva Santos. "My sister arrived, yelling that the dam had broken, and I went outside. The river was already full of sludge. I went back inside and closed the window because I thought I would be coming back. We ran."

Da Silva Santos didn't come back. Her decision to drive away ended up being fateful, as she survived the collapse of the dam by getting in a car; 19 other people were not so lucky.

Reports show that although Brazilian mining company Samarco, the dam's owner, knew about a leak at the impoundment 10 hours earlier, there had been no warning siren.

Dredging near the town of Rio Doce shows the extent of ongoing contamination

According to the United Nations, 50 million tons of iron ore and toxic waste were dumped into the river that day. The sludge covered riverbanks and cropland along the entire length of the 853-kilometer (530-mile) river, killing fish and other wildlife, and contaminating the drinking water supply for much of the river valley. Toxic sludge reached the Atlantic some two-and-a-half weeks later.

It's considered the worst environmental disaster in Brazil's history.

Did the mining companies act irresponsibly?

The mining industry accounts for more than $1.4 billion (1.23 billion euros) in the city of Mariana, where the disaster occurred. According to a report by Brazilian daily "Folha de São Paolo," Samarco was attempting to quintuple the size of the Fundão waste reservoir by connecting two different tailing dams when the collapse happened.

Samarco is a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world's largest mining companies. Brazil's Globo television network revealed that the company's sensors had detected possible danger of collapse in 2014 and 2015 before the actual failure - although the company said the dam had passed inspection in July.

In an act of protest against the mining companies, a Brazilian boy holds a sign saying: "How much is life worth?"

Critics say that due to a sharp fall in global iron ore prices in 2015, Samarco may have been more focused on expanding its production in order to avoid financial losses - and that emphasis may have overridden basic safety concerns.

Dirk van Zyl, a professor of mining engineering at the University of British Columbia, told Bloomberg News that dam failure like the one seen on the Rio Doce "is a lot more expensive than doing things right."

Zyl noted that a dry-mining waste storage technique used in Chile, where earthquakes are common - although much safer - costs 10 times as much as the tailings dam solution. He also noted that an initial estimate on the cost of recovery from the Fundão collapse done by Deutsche Bank put the figure at more than $1 billion.

Blow to indigenous people

Krenak called the aftermath of the dam collapse an indirect massacre of his people

For the indigenous Krenak community, which lives on a hill between a dry streambed and the polluted Rio Doce, the disaster did more than destroy their water supply.

"Watu" is the Krenak name for the waterway, meaning "sacred river." The Krenak cacique, or chief, Geovany Krenak, says that the waterway is intimately connected to his people. "The river is part of my culture, my life, my essence. We see the river as sacred. To the extent that you destroy something sacred, you harm a culture."

The community swam, fished and played in the river. Now its primary food source is gone, as is its place to cool off on hot days - or even obtain drinking water.

Water trucks paid for by Samarco have been supplying water to the community since the disaster, but residents complain that this water has high levels of chlorine that irritate the skin and stomach.

For Geovany Krenak, the issue goes beyond the physical problems the community is facing and touches on an existential one. "The wars came, the hydroelectric dams came, mining came. All of that, indirectly, is a way of eliminating the people," he declared.

For the Krenak community, the river was a sacred source of water for life

Future dam failures?

Agencia Publica, a Brazilian investigative news organization, reports that government leniency and corporate impunity are recurring themes in Brazil's handling of environmental disasters.

Eduardo Santos de Oliveira, a member of a task force of prosecutors handling the Samarco case, told Agencia Publica that the cause of such a disaster "as a rule, [is] a sum of omissions or bad decisions."

BHP Billiton and Vale will pay up to $5.1 billion over 15 years in a settlement with the Brazilian government. In June 2016, Brazil's Environment Ministry fined Samarco an additional $41.6 million for damages to protected areas.

However, Brazil's Supreme Court issued a temporary decision July 1, 2016, suspending the settlement on the grounds that the case should be decided by a lower court in Minas Gerais where the dam broke. Vale and Samarco said they would appeal.

But the large fines in this high-profile case are an exception, not the rule. Observers in particular point to regulatory failures in preventing such disasters.

Brazil's slap-on-the-wrist regulatory culture raises the possibility that the country will see more disasters like the Fundão dam collapse as its mining and other industrial infrastructure ages and deteriorates.

"Folha de São Paulo" reported that Brazil has 16 mining-related dams that are considered insecure, and that toxic mud continues to leak from the broken Fundão dam, despite a judicial order for Samarco to stop it.

Toxic sludge from the mining dam collapse even reached the Atlantic Ocean

Need for clean drinking water

For people all along the Rio Doce, these potential threats are taking a back seat to the immediate need to find potable water.

The city of Governador Valadares, with a population of roughly 280,000, had no water at all for nearly two weeks following the dam break.

Compounding river contamination issues, the area has also suffered drought.

André Cordeiro Alves dos Santos, a Federal University of São Carlos researcher, said the rainy season proved insufficient to supply cities and towns of the Rio Doce watershed with adequate water resources.

"It rained less than average, [so] some cities that were using other water sources are now having difficulties because many rivers and wells dried up."

Samarco is sampling and analyzing the Rio Doce water supply for Brazil's federal environmental authority, which found that iron and manganese levels were both greatly over the allowed limit.

Excesses of iron can provoke diarrhea and vomiting, while high doses of manganese affect the central nervous system and can lead to tremors, weakness and impotence.

Pedro Costa, the father of an 18-month-old infant, shared his fears. "I'm really worried about the water quality. The companies say that the water is fine, but other sources say it's not. So measures need to be taken, and the guilty parties really need to be punished."

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Where is life most harmful?

About 200 million people in the world are directly confronted with environmental pollution. Heavy metals contaminating the soil, chemical waste blown in the air or toxic electronic junk tossed into rivers. Those are only a few examples shown in the Green Cross Foundation's Environmental Toxic Report.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana

Loads of old satellite dishes and broken televisions are piled up in West Africa's second biggest electronic junk dump. The Environmental Toxin Report ranks it as one of the most polluted places on earth. The burning of wires to recover valuable copper inside a plastic coating makes the electronic junk is especially dangerous and releases lead into the surrounding area.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Citarum River, Indonesia

The Citarum River's water in Indonesia is about 1,000 times more polluted than conventional drinking-water and contains huge amounts of aluminum and iron. About 2,000 factories use the river as a water source and dump their industrial waste into the water. The river also serves as a basis of life for millions of people.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Industrial center Dzerzhinsk, Russia

Dzerzhinsk is one of Russia's most important centers of chemical industry. Between 1930 and 1998, about 300,000 tons of chemical waste were not been properly disposed of in the area. Lots of these chemicals polluted the ground water as wells as the air. In Dzerzhinsk women have a life expectancy of 47 year while men's is 42 years.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine

To this day Chernobyl is recognized as the worst nuclear accident in history. On April 25, 1986, tests in the nuclear power plant lead to a core meltdown with fatal results: to date no people live within a radius of 30 kilometers. The soil around the nuclear power plant still is contaminated and endangers the food production. Many people around Chernobyl contracted leukemia.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Tanneries in Hazaribagh, Bangladesh

Hazaribagh has more tanneries than anywhere else in Bangladesh. The majority of these factories use old and ineffective methods and end up tipping about 22,000 liters of toxic waste every day into the Buriganga River - Dhaka's most important water source. Many people suffer from skin and airway diseases caused by carcinogenic material.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Lead mines in Kabwe, Zambia

In Kabwe, the second biggest city in Zambia, many children suffer from increased levels of lead in their blood. For a century, the lead mines released heavy metals in the form of dust particles that fell on the ground in and around the city.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Gold mines in Kalimantan, Indonesia

Kalimantan belongs to the Indonesian part of the island Borneo and is particularly known for its gold mines. To get at the gold, many mines use mercury releasing more than 1,000 tons of this toxic material into the environment and ground water every year.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Matanza-Riachuelo river, Argentina

About 5,000 factories dump their sewage into the Matanza-Riachuelo River in Argentina. Chemical producers can be blamed for more than a third of the river's pollution, the report said. The water contains increased amounts of zinc, lead, copper, nickel and other heavy metals. In this area the populations suffers from intestinal and airways diseases.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Niger Delta, Nigeria

The Niger River delta is a heavy populated region in Nigeria and home to as much as 8 percent of the country's population. It is strongly polluted with oil and hydrocarbon poisoning the soil and ground water. On average, each year 240,000 barrels of petroleum reach the Niger delta caused by accidents and oil robbery.

The 10 most polluted places on earth

Industrial city Norilsk, Russia

In Norilsk, a Russian industrial city, almost 500 tons of copper and nickel oxides as well as 2 million tons of sulfur oxide are released into the air. The air pollution is so extreme that factory workers' life expectancy in Norilsk is 10 years less than the Russian average.